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Today’s post has nothing to do with Georgia really, at least not my daughter Georgia. Today I was far away from her in Maine, my first full day without seeing and holding and loving on my baby. As I write this though, I am on the plane heading back to Omaha and back to my baby and husband. How I’ve missed them so.

Anyone who lives in Omaha and flies a least a few times a year will tell you there are no easy routes to get to and from Omaha. I rarely find non-stop flights to the east coast, and even my one-stop flights are not always very logical. Many times it seems I must go out of my way to get back home, never a straight line. Such was my route today. I left Maine and drove to Boston where I boarded a Delta plane. Instead of cutting west toward the Midwest to change planes in some snow-covered, cold city, we headed the direction I love best – south. Delta to me always means Atlanta, and that’s exactly where I was headed for a layover and plane switch.

Oh, my beloved Georgia. It’s one of only two places in this country I feel at home, and Omaha is not the other. It was dark by the time my plane crossed the state line, and even though I couldn’t see it in the light-speckled darkness below, I knew we were flying over that red dirt ground, and it was comforting. It was like a mother’s hug to me. And all I could do was look northeast, to what I imagined must be the upper right-hand corner of the state, and I knew I was looking in the direction of where my mother will always lie. I missed her so at that moment. For a fleeting second, I had the wild thought of walking out of the airport the moment we landed, renting a car and driving there, driving to my mom and the place where she raised me, the place where I have almost no memories without her. It was a tempting thought, but responsibility and reality were not far behind it.

As my plane came within sight of Atlanta, as it always does when I first catch sight of the skyline, my heart danced and warmed. Home. I’ve lived far from here on several occasions, and the sight of Atlanta from the sky has always been my first indication that I’m home. Only this time it was not a true trip home but just a tease of my emotions. Still, I did smile when I walked off that plane and into Hartsfield-Jackson Airport and knew I was walking on sweet Georgia clay. For a while I saw familiar sights within this airport I’ve visited so many times through the year. The stores, the AJC in the newspaper stands, the southern accents generously sprinkled among other voices from all over. But I knew my time was short, and before long I heard a woman’s voice announcing the boarding for my flight to Omaha. It was time.

My eyes never left the ground as we climbed higher in the sky and I said goodbye to my land of peaches, peanuts and pecans – I’ve always loved that they’re all “p’s” and I don’t know why. Even though the plane continued to put distance between me and that red dirt, I still felt it under my feet and squishing between my toes as I always felt it as a younger barefoot girl. And I looked into that far right-hand corner and said a goodbye to my mom and an I’m sorry I couldn’t visit and sit by your headstone for a while. I do miss you so.

When I knew we must no longer be over my home, I turned from the window and opened the only thing fitting at this point, a copy of “Southern Living” I had brought along with me. I turned it page by page, remembering the copies always scattered around my mother’s house. She always seemed to be cooking and testing another recipe from its bounty. In fact, one of the last times she had the strength left to travel to Omaha to visit me, she gathered up the energy from somewhere within her cancer-ridden body and cooked a salmon cake recipe, a page torn from “Southern Living” as her guide. As I closed that December 2010 edition, I noticed something I had not before. Right above where my name and address were marked on the cover was my mother’s name, and it read “Gift from.”

My mother had always given me a subscription to “Southern Living” for Christmas, but it has been 15 months since she was buried in that red dirt. I had wondered a few months back why I still received copies in the mail. I just figured I had paid for a subscription and forgotten that I had. But no, my mother is still gifting me with southern memories.

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About this Blog

This blog started out as a look at one year in my daughter Georgia's life, 365 days. But how could I stop there? We get to repeat those 525,600 minutes again year after year, and this blog will continue to follow our changes, challenges, laughter and tears. You'll see it all through the eyes of a somewhat hectic, somewhat flustered but always in love mommy with a camera forever in my hands.

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Georgia's Birth Story

The timing of Georgia's birth, in a way, came out of a journey to death. I'd like to think with every death comes new life, and for me, Georgia is that life. She is my saving grace and has kept me breathing when my lungs were screaming to stop, screaming to drown in my own self-pity.

My husband and I decided to try for Georgia just a few months after our walk down the aisle. You see, my mom had been diagnosed with incurable Ovarian Cancer, so I wanted a baby soon. I wanted a baby while there was still time to have my mother there as I brought a new being into the world, to see my mother hold her granddaughter, to ask my mom which of my baby features my daughter bore, to lean on my mother when I had those "new mom" questions and for so many other moments I had played out in my thoughts over and over again through the years.

My husband and I were thrilled to soon find out our little Georgia was growing inside of me, rounding out my belly day by day, pushing tiny feet into my sides, entertaining us with a neverending chorus of hiccups. We went to the doctor's appointments, the baby classes, took the hospital tour and had everything ready for the day we brought our darling home in Omaha, Nebraska.

It's funny though, life seems to fight our planning and always chooses its own course - and so it did. When my belly was just shy of 38 weeks round, the day came. After a 52-year-long life, which was as bright as they come, my mother faded away. She died on Sunday, October 11, 2009.

Early Monday morning, with my doctor's permission, my husband and I got on a plane to fly home to Georgia for my mom's funeral. We got off the plane in Atlanta around 3 p.m. Twelve hours later, at 3 a.m. on Tuesday, I was sleeping at my parents' house. As I lay in the home where my mom had been just days before, that journey toward life took a leap. My water broke and the contractions started coming within minutes. We were more than a thousand miles away from our doctor, our hospital and our house.

So off to the local hospital we went in the dark of night, my husband driving my mom's SUV and not having a clue where he was going. I had to give him directions between contractions. We arrived at the hospital and didn't even know what entrance to go to. We found locked doors twice before finding the right entrance, and yeah, I floundered up to both locked doors!

We checked in and by the time we got to a room, I turned around and there were my sister, brother and cousin in the room with my husband and I and my other sister and father were on the way. We had thought we'd be delivering in Omaha with just my husband and I and the calming classical CD's I'd burned. I guess my mom had other ideas.

So there we were, in the hospital where two years earlier they had cut cancer from my mother, in the hospital where my two nieces were born, in the hospital where my delivery nurse had also been my sister's bridesmaid - there surrounded by those who love me most and the memory of one who just couldn't stay long enough to make it. I delivered Georgia Katherine at 10:46 a.m. She weighed 7 lbs. and 8 ounces.

We left the hospital on Wednesday with a borrowed car seat, a bag full of borrowed baby clothes, a lot of flowers and hearts bursting with every emotion you can possibly imagine. We arrived at my parents' house to a borrowed crib, borrowed baby supplies and relatives arriving in town with funeral clothes and baby gifts packed in their suitcases. On Friday, my daughter and I looked down on my mother in her casket, and on Saturday we buried her. It's the only time my daughter every saw her grandmother.

My mother fought hard to live long enough to meet her granddaughter and in the end, she missed the date by two days. But life doesn't stop, and it's the beauty of my daughter's life that keeps me smiling. And oh how her life makes me smile. I like to believe whenever I'm holding my daughter and she's starring off into the distance, over my shoulder, that she's seeing my mom - a guardian angel for both of us - and that they are already the best of friends.